If you wish to be a real estate agent, you should realise that the career of real estate broker is incompatible with other activities.
So, what exactly do we mean when we talk of real estate agent incompatibility? This guide contains all you need to know about it, as well as the most recent regulatory revisions.
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Table of Contents
The real estate agent’s incompatibility
Given the specific qualities of the real estate broker’s job, anyone performs this activity faces an incompatibility limitation.
The Law of 3 February 1989, n. 39, which governed real estate brokerage until 2018, stated that persons who practised the profession of real estate agent could not work in any other field, either as an entrepreneur, freelancer, or employee.
However, in accordance with European legislation, to which the categories of incompatibility indicated in the preceding paragraph pertain, several innovations are made, allowing the mediator to carry out any activity as long as certain regulations are followed.
This change was made in order to open up the real estate agent profession’s activity to a multi-service perspective, in which brokerage in the sale and rental is only the starting point of the profession, to which one can add a whole series of activities that can respond to the new needs that have emerged in terms of living as a whole.
In practise, only the following are prohibited from working in real estate brokerage:
Construction and real estate entrepreneurs freelancers in the real estate industry (for example, building surveyors, real estate architects, energy certifiers, and condominium administrators) workers of banking, financial, and insurance organisations
But, in August 2022, the potential of real estate agents acting as credit brokers was introduced. A real estate agent may be an employee or collaborator of a credit brokerage organisation, thanks to a modification to Article 5 of Law 39/89. The real estate agent will not be able to undertake credit mediation on his or her own, but will have to hire a firm to do it.
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Until 2018, real estate agents will be incompatible.
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Prior to the European law of 2018, the following could be causes of incompatibility: employee work in both public administrations (or entities equivalent to them) and private companies; employee work in banking, financial, or insurance institutions; any other professional or business activity, unless it always has real estate brokerage or brokerage as its object; enrolment in professional registers, orders, roles, registers, and other similar categories.
A recent statute
As previously stated, professional incompatibility for real estate agents is a recent rule that the Italian state has implemented with the approval of a European law in 2018, a text that contained important innovations for the activity of real estate brokers, which was positively accepted by all of the major trade associations in the real estate sector, who also read it as an excellent proposal to protect consumers and agency clients, not just the professionals who work there.
The goal of European law is to accomplish the adaptation of the Italian legal system to the European one, and one of the rules that had to be settled in order to resolve the ongoing issues with Europe was the professional incompatibility for real estate brokers.
What does the new legislation call for?
The most recent update to the legislation in this regard sees an increase of the obligations that come under the purview of real estate agents, who will be authorised to handle all aspects of the sale of a property. In this sense, the activities might include not just the usual operations associated with a real estate broker, but also, for example, the management of cleaning in short-term rental houses, condominium administration, or mortgage and funding assistance.
On the contrary, a limitation is imposed on all professions that, while distinct from real estate agents in general, are characterised as “connected to the same product area,” such as architects, attorneys, engineers, and accountants that specialise in real estate appraisals. Employees of insurance and financial firms may also be incompatible.
Greater room for auxiliary services
Under the new legislation, there is “less incompatibility” for the real estate agent, but there is more opportunity for the real estate agent to provide a variety of auxiliary services to individuals who sell, purchase, or rent a home.
Indeed, for some time, professionals in the sector felt that the previous legislation in force (Law 3 February 1989, n.89) was unsuitable for representing the changes that had occurred in the sector, with the need to expand the possibilities of action of those who practise the profession of real estate broker.
Because the real estate agent is increasingly acting as a point of reference for the consumer in a full series of interventions, goods, and services that complete the buying and selling process in today’s real estate market, this opening has been met with enthusiasm. In reality, modern real estate brokers must be able to give all-around assistance, not just with the real estate transaction, but also with everything else that revolves around the property as a whole.
